Party Poker Cuts Their High Stakes Poker Games

Thursday, July 19th, 2012 by Ryan

Party Poker has been known for many different things throughout the years. One of the key things is that they were the first major online poker site to move out of the United States (far before Black Friday), but also that they offered some excellent high stakes online poker games for players. Notice there that we said “offered”, not “currently offers”. The reason for this is because Party Poker has officially made a big move which was made official this when when they completely eliminated the high stakes poker games off of their site. There was no warning of this move by Party Poker, but they decided to take away any games with limits from $5/$10 No Limit and $30/$60 Limit. It’s an interesting move, that many people are completely at a loss for words about.

Obviously the high stakes poker players are very upset about the loss of the high stakes games on the site, but other people feel that this could be a step that is considered to show that Party Poker is simply one step ahead. There is actually the potential that online poker may be prevented from being legalized in part because of the high stakes games that are offered out there as some people have stated. Interestingly though, Party Poker actually didn’t state anything about this being the issue when they released a statement to PokerFuse about the reasoning.

The potential of the United States market being added was a factor in this decision to some extent though. The statement that was made said that they have decided to do this in order to “make improvements” to their “poker ecology and in our players best interests.” They also said that Party Poker feels as if this is going to “improve the action at our tables and is in the best interest of the poker room as a whole.” In all honesty, that simply doesn’t explain much, and still leaves players a bit confused as to why this decision was made at the end of the day.

It’s worth pointing out the downfall that Party Poker has had within the past few years in terms of online poker traffic. You can find that their decline is at about 50% currently, which is definitely at the top in terms of worst falls in online poker. It seems that many of the online poker rooms that are still up and running are making moves to better their rooms and connect with other companies or come up with new ideas that will set them apart. Party Poker on the other hand is in a bit of a stand still currently. This is why many people feel that we could be looking at a move by Party Poker to get back into the United States market, and if they manage to do that then it would result in an instant spike in traffic. Keep an eye on this situation moving forward, and we’ll update you if we get any additional information on this move from Party Poker.